Shattered Mirror
by Spiritual Stone
Summary: The Brothers end up dimension hopping because of a Mysterious Thingamabob from April's store again, landing themselves in a mirror world similar to their New York, but there are cracks in the reflection; before they can go back they must fix the wrongs of their City or tear it down from the ground up. :SAINW Inspired:
1. Chapter 1

To be honest this idea has been eating at my head for a while now. It was inspired by SAINW, in the sense that, well, what if one of the other brothers had died? What would have happened then? So obviously there's a character death, but yeah. You'll eventually figure it out.

Hope you enjoy!

And Welcome to **Shattered Mirror**

S.S.

* * *

**Cracks**

"Alright, _that's it_!" Michelangelo snapped, throwing his arms up into the air, "I am _banning_ us from ever cleaning out April's basement again. _Ever_! First it was that compass thing, then it was the statue that went nuts on Halloween, then it was that compass thing _again_, and now _this_! I bet next time there'll be a crystal necklace from Krypton or the Key of Truth for a futuristic Arthur or Merlin but you know what? We won't know. Because we are _never_ ever cleaning out April's basement or shop or living room or even the kitchen again. _Yes, even the kitchen. _EVER."

"You know, I think that's a good idea." Donatello groaned as Leonardo helped him up off the ground.

"Mikey has a good idea," Raphael growled, rolling his shoulders and neck, making them click. He waved off Leo's offered hand up and grunted onto his feet. "Shell. Lightning _does_ strike twice in the same place."

"I'm serious!"

"Yes, yes, we know. And I think I can say for all of us that we agree." Leonardo sighed, and gave the surrounding a quick once-over, knowing all his brothers were fine. "Any chance that we could still be in New York?"

They glanced around, taking in their surroundings, making sure that they were alone and thus far unseen. The alley they were currently standing in was atypical to any by-street they often found manholes and fights, a couple of bags of trash and a lone garbage bin huddled in a corner. It smelled like their New York, of car fumes and oil and hot concrete. It sounded like it too, which was baffling; if they'd been pushed into a secondary dimension or something, usually something was _blaringly_ wrong. But here, it wasn't. It was more of a… twinge in the shell.

"It… _looks_ like we are," Donatello hazarded, wondering if the others had that feeling too.

Raphael was gripping the sai at his belt, frowning. "This ain't right. Somethin's not right."

"We _did_ just get zopped by an ancient artefacty thing or something," Mikey pointed out, "Maybe we just got like, zipped from one place to another. Like a mini transmatt."

"But are we _ever _that lucky?" Donnie asked, jabbing a newspaper with his bo to stop it from tumbling away. He bent down to pick it up, unfurling it from its sticky ball, "There always seems to be a catch _somewhere_…"

"Let's go back to April's," Leonardo suggested, already heading towards a fire escape, "Take a look at that crystal that did this to us, and see if there're any unforeseen side-effects. The last thing I'd like to deal with is an open portal to a demonic planet or… something."

Michelangelo and Raphael gravitated towards Leo and the fire-escape too, finding no arguments against it.

"No."

All three of them looked back at Donatello, who looked… _terrified_?

"No," Don repeated, swallowing, and there was a firmness in his tone that brooked no argument. "We're going home. _Now_."

"Is… what's wrong?" was Leo's bemused question, "What's on the paper?"

"The date." The purple-banded ninja swallowed, and folded it to show them what exactly had freaked him out so badly. "It's… it's twenty years ahead of our time."

They all froze. Twenty years. They crowded round the paper, and sure enough, it was twenty years wrong. Cold gripped them like bear-traps. They'd been zapped twenty years into the future. Twenty years. _Without Master Splinter_.

"Oh shell," Mikey whispered, abject horror in his eyes.

Leonardo was already diving up the fire-escape, Raphael hot on his heels. "To the lair. _Now_!"

… … … … …

The Water Plant was empty.

"Master Splinter!" Raphael roared, throwing himself straight for where his underground herb garden was. Michelangelo followed, calling his brother's name and then their sensei's sounding desperately afraid and shrill as he went for Splinter's quarters.

Leonardo would've followed too, but years of paranoia had his eyes scanning for danger without his permission, and what they saw made him pause. He also noticed Donatello gripping his bo like it was the only thing anchoring him there, but still, he was _here,_ seeing this place like he was.

Too much dust. The air tasted stale and was thick enough to choke on. There was no kitchen, no couches, no shelves full of books or racks with weapons, no equipment, nothing. Bare as any abandoned civic building would ever be.

Leonardo gritted his teeth and checked the door that they came through, and there were no scratches there, not even the one he'd placed there when forcing the door open all those years ago, when they'd first claimed this place to be their own. He clutched a sudden stray hope that he couldn't even articulate yet, fumbling for a flashlight in his belt to look for any marks of nails drilled into the walls where they had first placed security cameras, when the compound wasn't secure enough for Leonardo's tastes.

They weren't there. He pointed it out to Don, who had noticed the lack of a generator too, and they came to a similar conclusion.

"It's empty."

"Yeah. It's empty."

"_Damn it_!" they heard their brother curse, "_Where is he_?"

"Master Splinter! _Master Splinter_!"

Don collapsed. Leo almost dropped with him, catching him before gravity could slam him against the rusted, dirt-covered floor, and there were tears in the genius's eyes.

"Guys," he called to the two still frantically searching for their father, who were looking less panicked and more bemused now, "I don't think he's here. I don't think we were _ever_ here. What's the theory, Don?"

This he added as Raph and Mikey leapt up the stairs without a sound, letting Don have a second to gather himself. He nodded, looked around, nodded again, and set his gaze on each of his nervous brothers. "Leo's right. This place looks like how we found it after Karai's ambush. No appliances, no TVs, no security measures, nothing. I don't… I don't think we were ever here. I think, whatever caused us to be here, it shifted us to a New York that… I don't know. A New York without us, or a different us, or… we'd have to look to find out exactly what is different. But Master Splinter isn't here. If he _is_ here at all."

It meant that they hadn't abandoned their father to twenty years' worth of worrying and waiting. With that knowledge everyone took a deep bone-wearying sigh of relief, and allowed one another a long slow minute to clamp down on their panic.

Raph stirred himself first, shaking off the fear like water from a duck's back. "Right. So. Still stuck in this dimension or world or time or whatever, so how do we get out?"

"Well, usually I'd suggest going back to the source and reverse the effects," Don hazarded, "But that might not work."

"Why? I mean she'd be totally cool with us…" Mikey puttered to a stop, the finger he'd raised in protest drooping with his expression. "Oh. Right. She wouldn't know us and do the screaming thing again, huh."

"Actually, I…" Don was gripping his bo still, a habit he had when trying to hide his shaking hands from his brothers. "Remember how we met her?"

There was a baffled pause. Then Leo clicked first, if only by half a second. "The Mousers."

Raphael slapped a hand against his eyes and groaned. "…Damn it. Stockman had them sic her."

Michelangelo's complexion paled and he shuddered as his imagination flashed him scenes of April being torn apart in the dark. "That's an image I'm not going to forget in a while."

Leonardo shook his head before his mind could conjure up all the other things that may or may not have happened in a New York without them, and focused on _now_. "We need more information; we may be in physically familiar territory, but once we move out we're essentially blind. We should treat this New York like we would an alien planet, or else whatever we hope to find or use to our advantage, chances are there won't _be_ any. Most of all, we should expect the worst. Just because we don't seem to exist it doesn't… it doesn't mean that our enemies don't, too."

_Especially the ones we've defeated,_ was left unsaid, but they all knew it, and their hands went comfortably close to the hilts of their weapons, if they already weren't.

"And on top of all that, we're ahead in time, which obscures the condition of the hypothetical enemy even more. Anything can happen in twenty years, with or without the usual mess we seem to attract," Leonardo continued, standing up and dusting off his hands, "And till we find a way back home, we're going to need a secure base we can protect ourselves from and to rest. Though I hope we won't have to stay long enough for that to be necessary."

They all made noises of agreement at the final disgruntled sentence.

"Right. Do our shell-cells still work?"

They checked, called and txted each other to be sure, and put them away.

Nodding in approval Leonardo put on his Leader Face and they all marched out of the reservoir. "We'll explore the sewers and check for any unusual activity. Once we're sure there's nothing big enough to be a threat, we'll see if the Y'lintian lair exists."

"Why not here for base?" Was Raphael's response as they descended into the dark underground, a familiar sense of a mission cementing them into a team. They began to jog, building momentum. "It's empty as ever."

"I'm not ruling out the reservoir, just plotting it as Base B. Abandoned or not, it's still a civic building, known to humans. The Lair is further underground, less obvious, more secure, and central. Strategically, it's better suited to our needs."

Raph grunted his concession. They sped to a run as they entered the storm drains, and the splashing ceased when Leo gave the silent order. As ninjas they bled into the dark and silence, and moved as shadows.

The silence was broken by the barest of whispers. "Are we splitting up?"

"Not now," he decided as they ghosted through tunnels they knew as well as each other, all of them taking turns to peer round corners, nodding each other onwards, a shapeless entity with four pairs of eyes. "Like I said, we're moving blind. The Old Lair might not even be there, depending on how different this New York is to ours. Once we've scoped the area and secured it, we'll go topside, and if it's dark enough we'll split. If it's daylight by the time we get there, we'll have to sit tight and figure out what to do then."

Nunchucks out, the brother that'd questioned him grinned and saluted before leaping forward and waving the others onward.

He kept pace with Donatello for a while, silent together, thinking over different facets of the same question. Their silence spoke for them, and when Don nodded, Leo nodded back. They slipped around the corner their brothers deemed safe, whispers of shadows even the rats barely noticed.

Until they skidded to a halt and made them squeak in fear.

There was a wall there that shouldn't have existed.

Don hissed in surprise as Leo glowered at the unfamiliar territory. Mikey and Raph joined them, one bemused and the other annoyed. "Now what?"

"We go around, goob," Raph replied, already turning away, "Like Leo said, twenty years is a long while. The city probably fixed this place up."

With the exception of one, they turned. Leo noticed the absence, turned back, and frowned. "Don?"

"The City could've upgraded the drains, yeah… Except they didn't," Don murmured, sheathing his bo and stepping towards the myriad of pipes that sprouted along the brick and concrete. He passed his hands over and around them, till he found a valve that he twisted, which pushed forth a post-box sized brick from the wall, revealing a security pad, which he hesitated at.

Michelangelo blinked. "Wait, so we _do_ exist?"

Donatello nodded. "Almost definitely. I always put these pipes up like this. But it's… the keypad, it's high tech, even for me, and this wall? If we built this from scratch… where would we have gotten the materials? Okay, twenty years is enough time to scrape a good wall together, true, but _why_?"

"If you really wanna know that bad, we could just _ask_, right," Raph drawled, crossing his arms, "It's _us_. Talkin' to _us_."

"I don't know…"

"Geez, Don, it's not like we _bite_. And the us that might be on the other side, we're twenty years older, right? I think we'd've gone through enough weird, wonderful, trippy shit to not be too damned surprised about seein' us."

"I'm really going to be confused by the end of this, aren't I."

"Shut up, Mikey. Seriously, Donnie, what's the nervous break-down for?"

Donatello would've snapped if that final sentence had been spoken with scorn, but it had been genuine bewilderment and Raph's brand of concern that'd marked it, which made him sigh instead. "You know how that, Ultimate Draco thing zapped us into different parts of time and space that one time?"

"…Go on," Leo prompted, after sharing a glance with the others. Don had never talked about that bizarre episode of their lives, saying rather bluntly that he really didn't want to, and they'd left it at that.

Still not looking at them, but at the key-pad, Don nodded. "Well, Draco zapped me in… I suppose it was a different time line. I mean, I'm sure it is now, since we got rid of the Shredder, but… I'd disappeared. You were in your forties, maybe fifties, the Shredder had conquered the world and I'd been gone for thirty years. It was like that book _1984_, only… much, _much_ worse. Judging from what we saw topside, this isn't that world, and for that I'm extremely grateful…" he saw the looks on his brothers' faces and he gave a wry smile. "I'm just, concerned. Anything could be behind this door, familiar or not."

They all turned to Leo, who was holding his chin in thought. "Our options are this: we go in, ask for their help, see how they react. Or we watch and wait, see how they are, and then approach. I admit, the latter option would be safer, but we need to remember that _twenty years has theoretically passed_. We might not even be here. We could have moved out, or got ambushed, or we may be on a pizza run as we speak; still night topside, after all. Only, this time lapse is a huge advantage to them, and like you said, Raph, if they've dealt with as much weirdness in their lives, chances are they might strike first and ask questions later."

"I say we go in." Raph decided for him, unsheathing a sai and spinning it. "Both plans might end up the same way, the only difference is the stallin'. And I ain't waitin' around for my own permission to go into my own home, and to get back as fast as we can we gotta get our shell's movin'."

"Let's just hope they're friendly." Mikey clapped a hand against Raph's as Don and Leo nodded agreement. "And who knows? Your looks may've improved, Raphie-boy."

Said turtle snarled as Don keyed in their oozeday and the door rumbled open on rusted hinges.

It looked like a garage. A couple of sewer sliders, a bike and a half with its innards scattered round its skeleton, and the Tunneller. There were spare parts of engines and vehicle frames, hooks hanging from ceilings, and wracks typically found in auto-depots to look at the underside of a car without being pressed against the ground. Probably necessary, since they barely fit under cars as it was with their shells.

No turtles in sight.

"I guess we built this when we figured an abandoned warehouse was too much of a security risk," Don hummed, pulling a lever on the wall to get better lighting, "I remember thinking that a few days before the ambush."

"Hey we have a pinball machine! Sweet!" Michelangelo bounded forward even as the weak fluorescent bulbs flickered and gave the thing a quick once over, grinning broadly. "Dude, this is Star Wars 7! And it's… really, really dusty."

He retrieved his hand with a mild note of disgust, the dust so thick on his palm it may have been a layer of felt. He shook it off a long-winded 'ew', and sneezed.

The three remaining turtles were also wondering in, gravitating towards places they found interesting. Leo followed Raphael, knowing Don would be in a world of his own as he clued himself in on their alternate selves' projects. Raphael picked through the bike's skeleton, his expression growing darker by the second till he gave a growl of resentment, stood up and kicked away a rusted engine. "Some mechanic. If this me's been wasting good scrap by lettin' it sit and rot here, there's gonna be words."

"Fists, you mean." Leonardo couldn't help but tease.

"_After_ the words." Raph shot back, giving his knuckles a few satisfying cracks.

"Is it me, or does this place look kinda unoccupied?" Mikey called, jogging back towards them, sweeping his arms out to take the place in. "I mean, I know Don's room can be a pigsty and Raph has the hygiene sense of a hippo, but you guys can be pretty neat-freaky about all the grease-monkey stuff. What gives?"

Don sighed and called out from where he'd wandered off. "Raph?"

He nodded obligingly and smacked Mikey upside the head.

"He does have a point though," the blue-banded turtle continued without missing a beat, even as the abused brother protested loudly and rubbed the sore spot, "You guys are scarily touchy about your rides."

Raph glowered at the mess and nodded. Don was checking up on the Tunneller, muttering to himself. They called him over once they found the crystal-run elevator, and they descended into their old home.

When the doors opened they were hacking on the dust-cloud that billowed from the action.

"D'aw, _gross_!" Michelangelo stumbled out of the elevator and windmilled his hands to try and dismantle the blanket of dead strata that hovered all around them. "Dude, we must've moved out or something because no way Master Splinter would let us-"

There was a blurred shadow racing towards their distracted brother and Leo lurched forward crying out his name. Don got there first by the length of his staff, sweeping Mikey's feet from under him as Leo lunged over his squawking frame to intercept the oncoming blade, his own ken ringing against the attacker. The foreign tanto flew and there was a cry of agony.

It sounded familiar.

"Raph! Lights!"

He'd already slammed his hand against the wall where the switches were, the weak bulbs flickering like strobe when Leo had given the order. When the underground facility cleared up, they all gasped.

It was Splinter. Master Splinter, their father. Yet not.

He looked scarily old. The robe wrapping his hunched form was faded, frayed, abused. He was shaking as he clutched the paw that'd held the tanto, wincing from the disarmament, almost curling double over himself. In that instant he looked infinitesimally small and vulnerable, jarring their minds with the _wrongness of it all._ Despite his height he'd always seemed so big, powerful, their Master Splinter could never be disarmed by the likes of them, much less be _hurt_, and…

Leonardo knelt in front of the greyed rat (so much closer to white than they could believe, his fur was thin and he was balding around his dry snout and could this really be him?) consequences or danger be damned, dropping his weapon as if it burned. Taking the painfully thin paws into his rough ones, the blue-banded ninja peered into the rat's eyes, which seemed unfocused and wary. "Sensei I'm so sorry I didn't know I didn't… Master Splinter…?"

The rat blinked, and peered right back, and his voice was like gravel rolling down a snowy hill, soft and slow and lost. "Leonardo…?"

Michelangelo scrambled from the ground, whispering 'no way' _way_ too many times as he too knelt next to his father, and he just _stared_, and he was too shocked to flinch when the old mutant placed a violently shaking paw against his beak as if to make sure he was real.

"Mich…" he coughed, swallowed, and his eyes were shining . "Michelangelo?"

"Yeah, it's…" he held the hand firmly against his face, determined to reassure his father. "It's me, sensei. It's all of us."

"All of…?" was his awed gasp as Leo and Mikey shifted to the side, revealing Raph and Don who were frozen into statues of utter disbelief. The rat's eyes widened, taking them all in, repeating their names once more before any other words he spoke became incomprehensible with tears.

Master Splinter. Crying. It was as if their life would never make sense again.

"Oh my sons, my sons," he whispered gratefully as he tottered forward, and with terrifying speed Raph barrelled into the rat and Don nearly cried out 'don't hurt him!' but he stopped himself, because Raph was being so scarily uncharacteristically (yet not; he really could be soft when he allowed himself to be) gentle as father and son embraced.

"My sons," Splinter wept, "Oh, my sons, my _sons_…"

They all found themselves in a group hug, and didn't know for how long they stayed that way, as each brother stared at the other, all their eyes asking the same question:

_What happened to us?_

* * *

**Am I the only one who feels as if Splinter doesn't get enough love? I'm working on a Splinter-centric fic, but it's really hard to figure out sometimes. **

**Anyway, hope you enjoyed this, and that it's managed to be a pretty good precursor to the rest of the story. **

**See you next time!**

**S.S.**

**Oh and please review. **


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello! I'm back. :)**

**I just first wanted to say thank you to all the people who've been reading **_**Identity Crisis. **_**It's been fun to rework on it and hear your thoughts, though I suppose more reviews wouldn't hurt, lol. **

**But this hadn't been update in so long I figured I should show it some love, so here it is, and I hope you enjoy. **

**I give you:**

**Shattered Mirror**

_**Chapter 2**_

Raphael had been the first to back away to try and pull himself together, and that caused another chain of events, this time forward. Leonardo took their Master to the closest seat (the kitchen stool) as Donatello went in search for painkillers or a wet towel, just anything to help with the hand. Michelangelo joined Raph, who was shaking himself again, trying to do the water on a turtle's back thing, but the turn of events felt like rancid oil, clinging to the very crevices of his shell.

"Let's go look for tea," Mikey whispered, tapping Raph on the shoulder, "Tea always makes things better for him."

Raph nodded and muttered to himself about which tea Splinter preferred when stressed. "Green with chamomile and lemon blend, right?"

Mikey looked at his brother and nodded, having come to the same conclusion. "Yeah."

They didn't know the full array of tea Master Splinter managed to accrue over years upon years of scavenging, but this, this they knew painfully well. They smelt it each time they'd come back from mortal peril, and it was a scent of tea that they often associated with bed rest and aches and stab wounds.

They opened the cabinets, stared, and closed them.

They looked at each other. "Right."

"Yeah. Right."

And with that they pretended that hadn't happened.

They went to the sink, turned the faucets. Water burbled out after a strained half a minute, and even that sputtered brown before coming out clear.

They searched for a kettle and proceeded to boil the (literal) living crap out of it.

They returned with five cups/mugs that they'd scraped dirt and dust out of and spent half the boiled water to clean out, and passed it around. Only Splinter's mug had any leaves in it; it was dubious to say whether they were of the drinkable kind.

But Splinter thanked them all for their kindness and sipped. And they sat there, sitting on the floor in a circle around their master, just like how they used to as little tots. Only the strange familiarity was jarringly warped; in their memories, it was _them_ in tears, from scrapes or fights or close encounters with humans, with Master Splinter as a beacon of comfort and warmth. Here? Their father was still sniffling a little, and was wiping a stray tear even as he took in the murky water in his cracked cup like he was seeing all of the answers to the world in there, and it brought him relief.

The turtles looked at each other and they were all thinking the same thing: this was _wrong_.

"Forgive me, my sons," Splinter murmured, chuckling self-deprecatingly as he shook his head, "I know that you are, in fact, not my sons."

"That's not…" Leonardo stopped himself, and then nodded, slowly.

The grey ghost of the father they knew chuckled again, and took a slow sip. "I know of dimensions with planets and lands much like ours, and magics that warp time and space. You are my sons, yes… but to another rat who calls himself your master. That, or you are some strange device of one of my enemies, set to put me at ease before destroying me."

He managed a laugh at their spirited defence and denial, and waved down their protests. "Either way, it is a pleasure to see you, if it may be for the final time. Now tell me: how did you come to be here?"

"We… we don't really know." Don admitted, as Mikey shrugged and Leo and Raph exchanged glances, "We were helping April go through her basement for some old deeds for a university student's pet project, and then… we ended up here."

"Ah, Miss O'Neil, she is… well?"

"Oh yeah, she's not O'Neil anymore." Mike piped up, grinning despite himself, "She's a Jones, now."

"Yeah," Raph gave his signature bark of laughter, cracking his knuckles. "She finally got Casey to behave, and now she's the size of a _planet_."

"It's going to be a girl," Leo added with a touch of dubiousness, "And they're thinking of naming her _Shadow_. I mean, alright we're their friends and all and we like that they're dedicating their daughter's name to us, but _really_? _Shadow_? It's just… think of all the teasing."

"As if a gal of _that_ stock would ever bow down to bullies," Raphael snorted, achieving an approving chuckle from Mike, "And she has _us_ to kick their arses."

"That was just… bad," Don mumbled, rubbing his face, "Stock? _Really_?"

"Got a better turn of phrase?"

"Yes, duh, genes_._ DNA. You made her sound like misogynistic _soup_."

"Tell me everything," Master Splinter insisted, scooting onto the edge of his seat as if he could listen more keenly that way. "It would be wonderful to hear of your lives."

And they did. They spoke of their current home, their family that somehow extended despite their careful efforts, kittens from Klunk and his girlfriend Lucy (an incident that had nearly gotten Klunk killed by Raphael for even _looking_ at Mrs M's cat the wrong way, much less…), their occasional trips into Casey's Farmhouse, and a cabin in the mountains and a lighthouse on a little abandoned coast. They didn't mention the continuing feud with the Foot, or the Purple Dragons that became an official Organized Crime Syndicate under the guidance of Hun, much to Leonardo and Raphael's eternal consternation. They didn't also mention that their own Master Splinter was heartily healthy, tending after a herb garden and looking forward to the baby's birth as if it were his own grandchild. He and Casey's mother often played chess or shogi, and drank cider together, though they didn't mention that either. It seemed… unfair, that their own father lived such a happy life compared to the one that sat in front of them.

But it was their duty as sons to make their father happy, no matter what dimension he was from, so they talked and talked till their throats croaked and they had nothing else left to say.

Mikey's stomach grumbled, too.

"I've kept you too long," Splinter seemed to realise, shuffling to sit up and move them along, "Forgive me my sons. Go find food, use this place to your needs to return to your original home if need be, do whatever necessary. Go, go, I have wasted your time, and the night is still young. Find what you can, and then return; your rooms are available."

"But-"

"My own sons have been gone for a long time."

They all froze at that, having guessed that was the case, but not liking the implications.

"Forgive me. That was… that was said more harshly than needed. I apologise." The greyed rat sighed weakly, shaking his head. "Understand I do not mean to keep you here. I only… I only wish to help my sons one last time."

"Sensei…"

"Go. Go, find food, plan. Return. You are always welcome here."

"Yes, sensei," they chorused, before hesitantly turning to the elevator, travelling all the way to the surface. The garage here was as abandoned as the day they found it all those years ago, and it felt… disturbing.

They were all thinking it, so it was hard to figure out who actually spoke the words:

"What _happened_ to us?"

… … … … …

They'd escaped to the roof of their warehouse, sitting like gargoyles upon the corner of the building, two on the top tier, the other two close by on broken sills. A katana reflected a soft sheen of moonlight as Leonardo ran a stone against its edge, up and down, calming his sudden nerves.

"The way he spoke of April…"

They had all noticed: _She is… well?_

"The chances of her being dead are high." was what Don said, his voice flat.

Raphael shuddered. "Casey too, probably."

"Raph," was Leo's almost admonishing protest, but his brother cut him off.

"Can you _imagine _that thick-headed bull of a neanderthal letting himself live if April died on his watch? If she got _killed_ by…" he gritted his teeth and didn't finish the sentence. They all understood.

"He would've put _Kill Bill_ and _Mad Max _to shame, yeah," Michelangelo agreed, eyes furtively flicking over the skyline over a city that wasn't quite theirs. "Do you… do you think that's how we went?"

The comforting noise of Leonardo sharpening his blade died. They all seemed to stop breathing, their imaginations going wild. There were so many ways that they could have been killed; a Foot ambush, a Dragon sting, an alien adventure, getting embroiled in another dimension's war, culled by scientists, hell, they could have gotten run over by a car or shot on their nightly patrols. Sure, they'd stopped taking stupid risks (at least _catastrophically stupid_ risks, anyway) for a while, but that didn't mean that they led a safe life; their lives, in fact, had never been safe.

Leonardo's voice chilled them to the bone. "I don't think I could forgive myself for making a father outlive his sons."

"This ain't just your responsibility, Fearless," Raphael growled, "So don't you _dare_ put this on your shell."

Donatello and Michelangelo shared similarly determined and vehement protests, to which Leonardo couldn't help but smile, but the sentiment didn't quite reach his eyes. The silence settled again, but this time Raphael was fidgeting with his sai, a sure sign that he was ready to move now, with or without his brothers.

"So where's our cannon thinking of shooting off to," Donnie questioned with both severity and amusement, "And how big is your blast radius?"

"I say we finish what we _started_," he snarled, glaring into the distance, "And go Zero-Dark-Thirty on their arses."

"Uh, bro," Mikey pointed out, "As much as I like the reference and I totally agree with the idea, we can't snipe a target without seeing it in our scopes. Also? We've got a Blacklist longer than Reddington."

"We got surprise on our side," Raph argued with a hiss, "Whatever this is, wherever we are, the enemies here think we're dead. We could _use_ that."

Don sighed. "We still don't know what happened."

"Then _let's beat it out of 'em_!"

"That would make the element of surprise _pointless_." Leonardo argued waspishly, making Raph snarl wider, "If we're going to kill them, we need to know who _they_ are first, without being detected. We need to figure out _what happened_ to this dimension's us, when, how, and then figure out a strategy. And once we've cut them down, and make sure they never see the light of day_, then_… we figure out how to go home."

When Leonardo met Raphael's gaze, and then Michelangelo and Donatello's, the reception was mixed, but there was no objection.

He asked, anyway. "Any objections?"

"Not really."

"No."

Don sighed again. "Fine. But priorities need to shift; finding our way home should be on top of the list, equally with figuring out what happened. After all, we have our own sensei to get back to."

The two more volatile brothers seemed to be a little chastened by the unspoken rebuke, to which Mikey smiled. "So the artefacty thing. You think our little Easter Egg might still be back at April's?"

"Hopefully, yes," Don affirmed, "I'll go ahead and see if I can find it and bring it back to study."

"I could go look for Sentry?" Mikey offered, "Maybe the heroes know a thing or two about what happened to us, and since they're you know, the good guys, we'll probably be alright if we show up. As long as he doesn't try to stake me, being undead and all."

Leonardo nodded, sheathing his katana. "We'll need food as well."

"I'll do that," Raph grimaced, standing up, "And if I find any homeless guys, or the Professor, I'll ask around. If I can nab myself a couple a' street thugs maybe I can beat some answers outa' them. And yeah," he added for Leonardo's benefit, "I won't be seen."

"Alright, then, I'll-"

"Look after Master Splinter."

Leonardo froze.

"For once I agree with him, bro," Mikey supplied, earning a nod from Don, "I mean… it's Splinter."

"Who knows how long he's been living alone without us. Well, this dimension's us, anyway."

The bluebanded turtle clenched his eyes shut, but nodded. "You're right. After all, if anybody knew the whole story, it'd be sensei."

"...I could stay."

"I'll be fine, Raph," he murmured, standing. "Alright, everybody knows what they're doing. Scatter."

They dropped in different directions, and Leo swung himself into the warehouse once his brothers bled into the surrounding darkness. He wondered what he would say to this sensei once he got back into the Lair; he had the most terrible urge to bow down in front of him and apologize for a crime he hadn't yet committed, or never will commit considering this dimension probably wasn't theirs. But still, it was their father, and they had robbed him of a life without his sons.

His enemies weren't the only ones to blame; it took two to maintain a fewd.

As the elevator dropped to the Lair Leo decided to clean the place up a bit, to make it more serviceable as a base of operations as well as a way to make Splinter more comfortable. It was what a leader, a son, and a brother should do, and satisfied with that decision (though it urked him that he was safe behind walls while his brothers risked themselves out there) he called out Splinter's name as he stepped back into their dusty old home.

He wasn't there.

Leo stopped. He listened, he trained his nose, he scoured the place with his eyes. He unsheathed his blade in a blink and he crouched, adrenalin lining the very grooves of his shell.

He lunged and rolled into a sheltered spot and looked around, but there was nothing, no one, the home was terrifyingly empty and he had to bite down on his panic before he shouted and gave his position away to any unknown enemies, and he finally made his way to the kitchen corner that they'd been sipping hot water from, and all of their cups were empty.

Master Splinter's mug lay on the ground in shattered pieces, his drink spilt across the dirtied ground.

"No. No!" Leonardo whipped around, looking for a sign of a struggle, a mark or sigil of their enemies, _anything_. But there was nothing. Nothing at all. "_Master Splinter_!"

… … … … …

April's apartment was jarringly close.

He'd expected the run to be more than half an hour, but that was an estimate time from the Foundry, which was further away. He recalculated how long the journey should have taken from their new/old positions, and still it was too short; the estimate came from when they'd lived in the Y'lintian lair as _teenagers_. Now that he was an adult he was faster, not weighed down by the duffel that he'd always brought over to work on computer projects with her, or (now that he thought about it) the plywood that he and his brothers had been collecting to build the baby's crib and rocking horse. The rocking horse was under April's direct unwavering and somewhat terrifying supervision, in case he put in some mechanics that made it actually gallop or lope around or worse, have hidden counter-terrorist measures.

Casey, however, had no qualms about that for the crib; they were happily working on boobytraps for potential kidnappers, a fact that his brothers didn't know whether to report to their sister, lest she kill them all.

Donatello mourned the potential lost in this dimension as he disabled the security measures of the antique shop and quietly let himself in.

"So… where are you, artifacty…" he whispered, and rolled his eyes at himself. "We need a better name."

He skulked around, artfully dodging little boxes full of china and glass animals, whispers of memories following him in dustmote patterns. He and his brothers and their first attempts at being helpful, breaking more things than ninjas should be allowed to; helping to rebuild the shop after the fire, puzzling the official workers when the jobs they'd left during the day had somehow continued during the night. Ordering out thai that burned everybody's mouths except Splinter and Raph's, an army of cakes baked by Mikey and Leo for April's volunteering work. It was all there, ghosts of the mind that had never lived.

Whoever had done the re-sorting of this place had kept the basic layout, a godsend in Don's mind. They'd found the Doodad in the not-so-precious area, mixed with mismatched tea-sets, the second-hand clothing.

Now, what had that Thingamabob (still need a better name) looked like…?

The sound of a gun being cocked froze him in place.

"I know you're in there, and if you don't want to get hurt you're going to stay _still_."

The light still wasn't on, which was a relief, though Don knew from experience that at close range bullets _really hurt_, even on his shell. He had plenty of hiding spaces but his bo would be a limited asset, especially in an enclosed space as this. He wondered if the shelves would withstand his weight even for a second if he decided to go for the basement stairs where he was sure would be a way out…

Next thing he knew a presence vaulted over the shelves to face him and he had the barrel of a rifle shoved into his beak.

… … … … ...

Raphael was surrounded on all sides, fighting for his life. He disarmed a mook with a jagged-edged kunai, snapped his wrist while the turtle was at it, caught the dropped blade with his toes and flicked it into the forehead of a katana wielder; an impressive but admittedly lucky shot. The screams followed him as he lunged forwards, blocking a pipe swinging at his head as he kicked backwards into the gut of a human the size of a house, folding him over enough to use him as a jumping board to flip over two more goons, sending shuriken into their necks.

More of them were there, smirking like gangsters yet silent as ninjas. Their weapons and clothes were a mesh of streetwise professionals and amateur warriors, and the way they fought was scarily familiar.

A car passed their tussle in the alley and the headlights caught their tattoos in a glaring sweeping arc: Purple Dragons.

The roar in Raphael's ears grew deafening as he thought of Master Splinter in their Lair on his own for god knows how long because of the likes of _them_.

In fact, he killed so many of them he hardly noticed one of them crowing in victory amongst all the screaming, despite the stab wound in his gut: "Boss. He's all yours."

A blur dark as despair wearing a shark's smirk surged towards him, and Raphael held it off for two seconds before it disarmed him and slammed him chin first into the asphalt.

They beat him round the head till he knew no more.

… … … … …

There was no Headquarters in this dimension.

Maybe it was somewhere else. Maybe it didn't exist at all. As Michelangelo crouched there, watching the area from a distance, he wondered if he could run into Nobody, but considering the size of Manhattan Island it would probably have to wait for another night.

He thought of Klunk, and wondered if the little guy had died that Christmas night, or the kitten had survived and lived on. Not that he'd ever know, he supposed.

Sighing, he leapt for home. "I hope the others've had better luck than me."

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

**Aaannnd admittedly nothing _much _happened, but there's a cliffhanger, so yay?**

**Also, review replies:**

**adriennett - Thank you! I hope your interest is still piqued, because finally, here is the update!**

**Spaghetti Toast - Now that you mention it, maybe? I know Raph and Leo are notorious for being at odds all the time, but I was thinking these guys are a fair bit older than they were in the shows, so maybe they've gotten over it a little? Tell me what you think!**

**Dead Hero - Sorry I didn't update in while! DX But hopefully Splinter's situation is now better explained? I hope you enjoyed this chapter too, and I hope to see what you think!**

**Have a nice day guys!**

**(pleaseleaveareview)**

**S.S.**


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